Hard National Security Choices

Category Archives: International Transfers/Deportations

Under the shadow of Mexico’s twin volcanoes in the tiny mountainous village of San Mateo Ozolco, Erasmo Aparicio stands outside his house, arms crossed, black hood pulled down over his hair. “Fucking Mexico, no fucking money,” he spits out in defiant English. Now a campesino by his own description making 100 pesos—or just under $7—a . . . Read more »

Here is the fifth and final installment in our running, side-by-side comparison of the twenty findings and conclusions of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Study on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program—along with responses by the Committee Minority and the CIA. Summaries of Study findings seventeen through twenty can be found below. By way of reminder, . . . Read more »

In this post, we proceed with Lawfare’s ongoing, side-by-side comparison of the SSCI Study’s key findings, and responses to them by both the SSCI Minority as well as the CIA. By way of reminder, the SSCI’s Study made twenty findings and conclusions about the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices after 9/11—twelve of which the blog has summarized so . . . Read more »

Below, you will find the second installment in our ongoing effort to identify, in summary form, key areas of dispute as between the SSCI, the SSCI minority, and the CIA with regard the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. As you surely know by now, all three today released long-anticipated reports regarding the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and . . . Read more »

Here is the long-awaited Executive Summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. The latter includes in a single file a foreword authored by Senator Feinstein, as well as the Study’s findings and conclusions. Additionally, the Committee also has published these materials: Senator Feinstein’s statement; a history of key dates in in . . . Read more »

About a month ago, I asked what had happened to the UN’s effort to develop a set of standard operating procedures to govern detentions that arise during the course of UN operations. It appears that such a document exists in draft but is not public and has never been finalized. Against that background, I noted . . . Read more »

Clive Walker of the University of Leeds writes in with the following update on national security law news from Britain: On 21 November 2013, the United Kingdom’s government minister with responsibility for counter-terrorism, the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May), announced that the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Mr David Anderson QC, will . . . Read more »

An Irish court rules on the subject—in response to U.S. requests for extradition help. The opinion is actually an interesting window into U.S. efforts to get countries to impede Snowden’s travel. Bottom line, the Irish court rejects the hypothetical U.S. extradition request, but on grounds that are easily fixed with another request. If I were . . . Read more »

I’m the subject of today’s installment of the Council on Foreign Relations’ otherwise excellent “Interviews” series–an effort to distill the nuances of hot-button legal issues for a more diverse audience. Today’s interview tries to provide background on both the issues complicating Snowden’s potential extradition and the underlying charges against him (along with the substantive issues . . . Read more »

A slew of news reports have discussed whether Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong as a haven of sorts was a wise one. These reports tend to note the existence of a U.S.-Hong Kong extradition treaty and to describe the relatively smooth extradition practice that exists between those governments. But the stories tend to overlook the . . . Read more »

Hmmmm. From Harold Koh’s speech to the Oxford Union: Congressional transfer restrictions with respect to Guantanamo detainees “must be construed in light of the President’s authority as commander-in chief to regulate the movement of law-of-war detainees, as diplomat-in-chief to arrange diplomatic transfers, and as prosecutor-in-chief to determine who should be prosecuted and where.”

In mid-March, I noted a speech by Home Secretary Theresa May, in which she advanced the idea that the UK should consider withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights. As I noted then, the European Court on Human Rights had, again, blocked the deportation of Abu Qatada to Jordan. Qatada, who is considered by . . . Read more »

The hits just keep coming today for me — a flood of useful things to post. This one is about a speech that the UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, gave yesterday in which she proposed that the UK consider withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights. Some of the strictures of the ECHR have . . . Read more »

One of the more interesting structural constitutional questions to emerge from the post-9/11 detention litigation has been the previously under-explored relationship between the Constitution’s Suspension and Due Process Clauses–and the extent to which they might do separate work with regard to the scope of judicial review in executive detention cases. Thus, for example, in Boumediene, Justice Kennedy . . . Read more »

Current events in Africa illustrate the unintended and sometimes-self-defeating effects of humanitarian efforts on that continent. First, France’s military action against Islamist insurgents in Mali raises the question why Islamists are on the rise in Mali and elsewhere in North Africa. There are many causes, but the proximate one is the 2011 NATO invasion of . . . Read more »

As I discuss in my forthcoming book, International Law in the U.S. Legal System, regardless of whether customary international law has the status of self-executing federal law, it can play an important role in U.S. litigation. The invocation of customary international law in civil suits brought under the Alien Tort Statute is of course well . . . Read more »

The following is a guest post from Chris Jenks. Chris formerly was a Judge Advocate and Chief of the International Law Branch at the U.S. Army’s Office of The Judge Advocate General. Now he is an assistant professor of law and director of the criminal justice clinic at the SMU Dedman School of Law. On Wednesday, Italy’s . . . Read more »

Here’s your off-the-cuff read-out of this morning’s hearing before U.S. District Judge John Bates in Al-Maqaleh v. Gates and Hamidullah v. Obama, better known as the “can we get a little GTMO-style habeas review over U.S. detentions at Bagram” cases. In short, the court unsurprisingly pushed both sides and revealed weaknesses in their respective positions. . . . Read more »

Yesterday’s news out of the Supreme Court may well have obscured another significant detainee-related legal development: As Lyle Denniston has noted over at SCOTUSblog, on Friday, the en banc Ninth Circuit handed down a thoroughly fractured decision in Garcia v. Thomas, a complicated extradition-related habeas case raising the question whether courts may inquire into Executive Branch . . . Read more »

Bobby joined Charlie Savage and Jack Healy in querying here whether the U.S. Government might consider asking the Iraqis to extradite Lebanese national Ali Musa Daqduq to the United States. It is not a no-brainer for the United States to invoke the 1934 U.S.-Iraq extradition treaty, even if the USG could overcome Congressional objections to . . . Read more »

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In advance of tonight’s midnight deadline, nuclear negotiators in Switzerland have been working hard and working late. Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated, “We are working late into the night and obviously into tomorrow.” The Washington Post has the tick-tock on diplomats “scurry[ing] to reach” a settlement. Still, even if Iran and the . . . Read more »

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